twenty-one

The paramedics assessed the situation and took over compressions from Francine. They loaded him in the ambulance and left for the hospital. Francine’s hands were freezing and she got in Dick’s car. The motor was still running, and the heater was still pumping out warm air. She shut the driver’s door behind her and adjusted the air vent so it blasted her face. She held her hands in the stream of warmth to defrost them.

Jud shuttled Charlotte to Dick’s car and had her get in the passenger side. He climbed in the back seat. When they were comfortable, Jud got out his ever-present notepad. “How is it that I find the two of you out here in the middle of nowhere with one of Camille’s outspoken opponents on the Council having a heart attack?” he asked.

“How is it that you arrived here first?” Charlotte asked, countering.

“I have friends in the Dispatch center. They alert me whenever one of your names comes across their desk. In this case, both of them did. It was like hitting on a coverall bingo.”

Francine didn’t want to think about what happened after the last coverall bingo she’d been to. She rubbed her hands together and flexed her fingers, trying to get her circulation back. “Charlotte is interested in purchasing some land. Dick was showing it to us.”

Jud regarded Charlotte with suspicion. “You would move to a remote area of Hendricks County at your age, with no one around you to spy on or interrogate?”

“Who said I would move here? Maybe I just want to buy the property for investment purposes.”

Jud dismissed the comment. “And while we’re talking about coincidences, how about the coincidence that you are looking at purchasing some of Fuzzy Carter’s land, and he just happens to be another suspect in this case?”

Charlotte sighed noisily. “That land over there,” she said, pointing to their left, “belongs to Cass, not Fuzzy.”

“Let’s get to the point. Why are you here?”

“We didn’t force Tricky Dicky to drive us here, and we didn’t force him to have a heart attack,” Charlotte said. “He was in the process of showing us the land when he suddenly went into cardiac arrest. He probably shouldn’t have had that sackful of White Castle egg and cheese sliders for breakfast. And before you ask, we didn’t force feed him the White Castles, either.”

“I’m sure he ate those willingly.” Jud put the notebook on the seat beside him and crossed his arms. He was wearing a warm, thick Brownsburg police jacket and he had to work at getting one arm to fold over the other. “I think it’s time we talked about what you know about Camille’s death.”

Francine made eye contact with Charlotte, urging her to cooperate. Charlotte’s stone-faced expression told Francine that it would not come easy. “What if we drove Dick’s car back to Cass’s house, picked up my car, and returned to Charlotte’s house? We could talk there. Because Dick’s car is going to run out of gas soon, and I don’t want to be responsible for having it stranded here.”

“Not to mention that we need to keep working on the display for Camille’s funeral. It’s tomorrow,” Charlotte added.

Jud gathered his notebook. “Yet you somehow took time out from that very important task to come look at property with Dick Raden. Yep, I look forward to hearing why that is.”

Despite Francine’s offer to drive Dick’s car back, Jud made them turn it off and leave it there. He drove them back to Cass Carter’s driveway, where Charlotte’s car had been parked, and then followed them home from there.

“Let me do the talking,” Charlotte said as soon as they were en route.

“No problem. You’re the one who arranged for the near-fatal real estate showing with Tricky Dicky.”

Jud was quick to follow them inside Charlotte’s house. Francine took him by the arm and led him to the dining room table while Charlotte hung up their coats. Charlotte asked Francine to show Jud the progress they’d been making on the three storyboards about Camille’s life. Francine hoped it might help demonstrate their contention they weren’t really investigating her murder, even though they were.

“So, as I’m sure Francine has been telling you,” Charlotte announced triumphantly as she entered the dining area after hanging the coats, “we’ve divided Camille’s life into three sections. Her early life, the middle years, and recent past.” She pointed to each of them. Jud didn’t seem at first like he was going to look at them. He’d come in with his notebook and opened it up, but something caught his attention in the photos they’d posted on the first board.

“Where did you get these photos?” he asked.

Charlotte, for having said she’d do the talking, turned to Francine. “I think Francine got them from Eric.” She made a rolling motion with her hand to indicate Francine should elaborate.

Francine took a deep breath and plunged headlong into a defense. “You were there when I took them out of the house, Jud. Eric said it was okay. When Eric asked us to put this together, we knew we’d need to look through Camille’s files. It’s not like any of us would keep photos or articles about a neighbor.”

Jud held up his hand. “It’s okay, it’s okay! I’m not saying you did anything wrong. I just wondered where they came from.”

Charlotte must have caught his interest in the early photos because she indicated them with her hand, even though that poster was farthest away from her. “Are there any in particular you want more information about?”

“Not at all,” Jud said. “It’s just that I don’t know much about her. She lived here in Brownsburg all her life, didn’t she?” He took out his cell phone and snapped a photo of each of the storyboards.

Charlotte was quick to answer. “For the most part, yes. She did spend summers with a favorite aunt up in the Chicago area while she was growing up.”

“I didn’t know that,” Francine said, annoyed that Charlotte had seemingly withheld information from her. “That must be where this photo was taken.” She touched a picture on the first storyboard, which Charlotte had put together. The black-and-white photo featured a chubby young woman in a one-piece bathing suit standing by a Tastee-Freez stand holding an ice-cream cone. The smooth and creamy soft-serve was piled on top.

Jud nodded. “Is Tastee-Freez like a Dairy Queen?”

“Only better,” Charlotte said. “I used to love their banana splits. At one time there were a lot of them in the Chicago area. I think there might be one or two left still.”

Something about the photo bothered Francine. She got up close to the board and adjusted her glasses to get a closer look at the figure. “Are you sure that’s Camille? It doesn’t look like Camille to me.”

Charlotte moved in for a closer look. “I’m pretty sure it’s just because she was a lot younger then. We all looked different when we were that young.”

“Maybe,” Francine said.

Charlotte gave it one more cursory glance. “Who else would it be?”

The three of them stared at it for a few seconds, but no one appeared to have any better idea. Finally Jud asked, “Do you know where that stand was?”

“No. It looks like every other Tastee-Freez I remember.”

“Just curious.” He moved on to the second board, the one Francine had been working on. “I hadn’t seen this article on her helping catch the child pornographer. Interesting.”

Charlotte perked up. “What do you know about her consulting business, Jud? Anything?”

“It was profitable. She didn’t have a big list of clients, but she made good money from it.”

“Define ‘good money,’” Charlotte said.

“Good enough to pay the expenses and make a profit.”

“I imagine the expenses couldn’t have been too great, what with it being mainly consulting. Intelligence business, you know.”

“Are you getting at something?”

Charlotte reacted like he was accusing her of meddling in the affairs of the Police Department. Which, of course, she was. Francine had to suppress a smile. “Not at all, I was just trying to get an idea of scale. You know, how much she might have been worth.”

“And how is that relevant to creating this retrospective of her life?”

Charlotte put her hands on her hips. “Okay, Jud. Let me just be totally honest here.”

“It might be a first for you. You might find you like it.”

She sputtered. “We—that is, Francine and I—have it on good authority that she was worth somewhere around two million. I’m looking for some kind of confirmation here.”

“She lived next door to you for fifteen or more years, and you never had a clue how much she might be worth?”

Charlotte seized on that bit of information. “So you’re confirming she was a millionaire two times over?”

“Not at all. You’ll have to find that out for yourself.”

Give Charlotte a breather, Francine thought. Maybe it will help her calm down. “Perhaps you can provide some information on a question I’ve been having that has nothing to do with the investigation,” she said. “At least I don’t think it does.”

He turned to her. “Go ahead.”

“Why is her business named Jacqueline Consulting?”

He stroked his chin. “I can be honest. We don’t know.”

Francine used her fingers to enumerate some points. “Her middle name is Josephine. I checked that. I found a family tree in her Bible. There were no relatives that I could see that had the name Jacqueline. And to the best of my knowledge, she never married.”

Jud leaned against the table in thought, but his weight started to move it backwards. He straightened up. “Jacqueline is kind of an old-fashioned name, isn’t it? I can’t remember the last time I came across someone named that.”

“It was popular in the sixties. Jacqueline Kennedy. She was the first lady when John F. Kennedy was president.”

“Well, yes, but that was way before my time.”

“Surely not,” Charlotte interjected. “She married Aristotle Onassis and was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for decades after that. I bet you were alive then.”

He whipped out his cell phone and punched in a few things. “She died in 1994. I was still in elementary school.” He flashed the phone at her. “See?”

She didn’t check to make sure. She looked at Francine. “Has it been that long, really?”

“I’m terrible at estimating how long ago something happened,” Francine said, raising her hands palms up. “Everything seems like it was just a few years ago, and then I discover it was more than a decade.”

Charlotte became dismissive. “I stand corrected.”

Satisfied, Jud returned to perusing the middle board. “I see you’ve put some articles on here about Eric.”

“There wasn’t a lot of information she’d kept on her middle years,” Francine said. “She mostly saved clippings about Eric’s high school years. I decided to use one or two. She was clearly proud of him.”

Jud smiled. “Those were good days. At first he wasn’t close friends with Chad and me, but there’s nothing quite like high school football to bring everyone together. I remember that Camille was at every game.”

Francine could appreciate the memories. She had them too. “He was more like her son than her nephew.”

Charlotte said, “He was young when he moved here. Second half of eighth grade, maybe. He needed someone and she’d been alone most of her life. They bonded tightly.”

“Until first part of senior year, at least.” Jud said it matter-of-factly and continued on to the third storyboard.

“Wait.” Francine held up a finger. “What do you mean about senior year? I don’t recall anything happening senior year.”

“Eric got a little weird. He turned eighteen in September. Not that I think any of you adults noticed, but Camille did. He pulled away. Got a bit of swagger to his attitude.”

“You all got a bit of swagger that year. You won conference and regional and went to state.”

“It was different with Eric. We all thought there was something going on he wouldn’t talk about. We suspected it had to do with a girl.”

Francine frowned. That jibed with what her son Chad had told her only a few days before. “Like he was having relations with her?”

Jud snorted. “Relations?” He raised an eyebrow at her, half mocking the expression she’d used. “Yes, that’s what we thought, but any normal guy would have bragged about that. And none of his girlfriends seem to last more than a few dates. We never did figure it out.”

Jud moved on to the third storyboard. Charlotte had put it together, but since it contained the most recent information about Camille, it had been the easiest to do. At least, Francine thought it must have been. Like the first one Charlotte had done, it contained a lot of photographs. This was when Camille had become politically active.

Jud studied an article from six years ago, when Camille had first been elected to the Brownsburg Town Council. “What made her want to run for the Council? She was a political newbie, wasn’t she?”

Charlotte traced a finger on the article. “She was upset about the deterioration of the downtown district. You remember when Harley’s steakhouse was torn down?”

“No,” Jud said. “That was a long time ago too. My understanding is that it was beyond repair, though.”

“It was,” Charlotte said, “but that didn’t mean a Walgreen’s had to be built in its place. Right across the street from a CVS pharmacy. What had been a corner of downtown Brownsburg now looked like every other street corner in every other suburb in America. Then the town went and built the Taj Mahal of Town Halls behind the strip of downtown that barely remained, and it looked nothing like the old downtown. She revolted against the establishment and was elected.”

“She’s been a fighter on the Council,” Jud said. “I just didn’t know what was behind it.”

Francine looked at her watch. “I need to get the second storyboard done. I have to get to some other things this afternoon.”

“But first, it’s lunchtime,” Charlotte added. “Would you like to stay, Jud?”

“No. My purpose in coming was to figure out why you got Dick Raden to show you a piece of Fuzzy Carter’s property that wasn’t even for sale on a bitterly cold day when you were otherwise occupied getting ready for Camille’s funeral.”

Charlotte went to the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. “I could make grilled cheese.”

“I don’t have time. And you still haven’t answered the question.”

“I did. You just didn’t like the answer. I’m interested in buying property.”

“You’re lying to me. I know it and you know it. Why are you making this hard on yourself ? Admit you’re investigating this case, share your information with me, and I’ll go easy on you for obstructing justice.”

“If I knew something, then I might be obstructing justice. But I don’t know anything.”

“You probably know more than you think.” He shook his head in frustration. “My jacket’s in the closet, right? I’ll see myself out.”

He left.

“That didn’t go well,” Francine said. “You shouldn’t be making enemies with Jud.”

Charlotte pulled wrapped slices of American cheese out of the refrigerator. “We’re rivals, but hardly enemies.”

The doorbell rang, startling both women. Charlotte frowned. “That couldn’t be Jud again. It will take him at least another fifteen minutes to think of a clever retort.”

“More likely he’s thought of something to charge you with. He thinks of those faster.” Charlotte started for the front of the house but Francine waved her off. “I’ll get it.”

Before she could take another step, though, they heard the door open.

“It’s me, Joy!”

“Come on in! We’re in the kitchen!” Charlotte called.

Joy entered a few moments later. She was wearing a zippered red cashmere sweater and skinny black jeans that flattered her thin frame. It looks like something Alice’s personal shopper would pick out, Francine thought, though it would be in a larger size if it were Alice. The sense of fashion was similar.

Joy wielded her reporter’s notebook like it was a winning lottery ticket. “I have news!” She pointed to a page with scribbling on it. “It’s not a smoking gun, or anything, but if what I hear is true, Eric met individually with each of the other four members of the Council the week before Camille was killed.”